"This man was no stranger!"
"He came to me as one, not dreaming that I lived here. Would you ask me, because he was not a stranger, to revenge myself for a wrong of years ago by refusing to him the help I would have given to any stranger? You could not think that I would stoop to so base a revenge as to hand him over to death when I would have given up no other man who stood in his place? I would not turn a dog away that came to me for help and shelter. He came here, not knowing whose house this was—came to ask for food and help because he was exhausted, famishing. It was as much a surprise to him to find me here as it was to me to see who the man was who asked me for shelter. And I promised it to him, and I kept my word. He told me what he had done, and that the Vigilance Committee were on his track. I've lived here long enough to know what that means! I would not see the man who appealed to me to save him lawlessly murdered. He has done wrong; he deserves punishment; but he does not deserve the fate they would have dealt to him."
"They'd have strung him up on that big tree outside your gate," said Colonel Jeff, grim still, but relenting, "and serve him right!"
"I did not think he deserved death," rejoined Barbara, firmly; "I risked—more than my life"—her voice quivered for the first time—"to save him."
"You did," he said; "you risked having your good name dragged in the gutter, for the sake of that worthless scamp."
"I risked more than that," she returned in a lower tone.
"More than that?" He shot a keen, questioning glance at her from under his dark, heavy brows.
"Yes—I risked—and have I lost?—your faith?"
He paused a moment before he answered: "Barbara, when a man loves as I do, he loves to the end of life—and after!"
A light kindled in her steadfast, questioning eyes.